Welcome to Trade Shield! This guide provides the essential information needed to prepare and submit the data required for the set-up of your Credit Management Module.
Information Needed for Limit Review Workflow
To configure your credit limit review workflow, we will require the following assets:
- Company Logo
- Link to your company's privacy policy
- Approval Process (Speak to your Customer Success Manager for a workflow approval process template)
Ageing, Customer Masterfile, and Transactional Data
Ageing, Masterfile, and Transactional data can be shared as one file or multiple separate files, as long as each file contains the customer account number for matching.
The data should include the below information. Fields marked with * are mandatory:
- Customer Account Number *
- Customer Name *
- Payment Terms *
- Payment Term Description
- Credit Limit *
- Customer Registration Numbers/VAT Numbers (Both if available) or ID Numbers (for sole proprietors) *
- Ageing Buckets * (e.g. current, 30, 60, 90, etc.)
- Currency (mandatory if there are values in your ageing other than ZAR)
- Business Unit/Division
- Branch/Region
- Account Personnel
- Credit Personnel
- Sales Personnel
- Transactional Data (Optional)†
† Your transactional data / invoice level data submission should include but is not limited to:
- Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) per customer
- Customer/debtors ledger extracts
- Payment history and average days to pay
- Transactional data (e.g. amounts, transaction dates, payment allocations)
As part of our near-term roadmap, submitting this data will allow Trade Shield to calculate additional metrics such as DSO and NSV, and deliver more impactful, forward-looking analytics.
How to Submit Files
This information can be submitted directly to filesubmissions@tradeshield.ai with your Customer Success Manager in copy. Alternatively, you can submit this information via SFTP. Please contact your Customer Success Manager to obtain your account-specific SFTP details.
- Email: filesubmissions@tradeshield.ai
- For SFTP: Contact your Customer Success Manager
File Naming Convention
Each data submission should be labelled with the date of the file as Year-Month-Day (YYYY-MM-DD) followed by your organization's business name. For example: 2025-09-16-YourBusinessName.xlsx
Initial Submission of 12-Month Historic Ageing and Transactional Data
Please share more than 12 months of historic data if it is available.
Your initial submission should include the latest 12 months of historic month-end ageing. Each month-end report can be a separate file or included as a separate tab in the same spreadsheet.
If transactional data is available for this same historic period, please include it in your initial submission — either within the same file(s) or as an additional file/tab alongside your ageing data.
If you are conducting a Proof of Concept (POC) with Trade Shield, please submit this information with your Sales Executive in copy.
Ongoing Submission of Ageing, Masterfile, and Transactional Data
Ongoing data can be submitted directly to filesubmissions@tradeshield.ai with your Customer Success Manager in copy, or via your designated SFTP folder.
Data can be submitted on a monthly, weekly, or daily frequency. We recommend sharing data as frequently as possible (weekly or daily). If you have customers with 7-day payment terms, we recommend a minimum frequency of weekly submissions.
A month-end file must be submitted each month. This is the minimum requirement for Trade Shield to successfully host and update your platform.
Where available, transactional data should be submitted alongside your ageing data, using the same frequency, channels, and file naming convention.
Ongoing data should always be submitted between 17h00 and 18h00 (SAST).
FAQs: Data Submission
Why do we require Masterfile information?
The Masterfile data acts as the foundation for setting up your Trade Shield platform. It contains identifying information about each customer, ensuring accuracy in matching accounts to the relevant legal entity in our database. It also provides details on payment terms, credit limits, and other attributes that allow us to create filters, helping you view your debtors book in segments.
Why do we require frequent ageing data?
Ageing data allows us to capture a customer's credit usage and repayment behaviour over time. These details are essential for monitoring credit health, identifying risk, and enabling proactive management. Frequent ageing submissions (daily/weekly) allow your team to have an up-to-date view of their customers' ageing in Trade Shield, which helps us predict trends and identify customers who may pose a risk for future late payment or default.
Is transactional data mandatory?
No, transactional data is optional and not a mandatory requirement for onboarding. That said, we'd strongly encourage submitting it where possible: as part of our near-term roadmap, this data will allow us to calculate additional metrics such as DSO and NSV, giving you more impactful, forward-looking analytics on your customers' payment behaviour. See the note under the Ageing, Customer Masterfile, and Transactional Data section above for what this submission should include.